For Rich Foodies, Organic Is Out, Foraging Is In

Every Tuesday on VF.com, filmmaker Jamie Johnson offers a glimpse into the secret lives of the super-rich.

It is a paradox of modern eating that every advance in food technology seems to provoke a renewed desire to eat simply.

It wasn’t long after genetically modified food started selling in supermarkets, for example, that organic groceries gained popularity. And in the world of fancy cuisine, the last decade has been the age of local, organically farmed produce. Elite chefs and the people they serve placed the highest value on food items purchased at greenmarkets supplied by community agriculturalists. In Manhattan alone, several posh restaurants bragged of their relationships with local family farmers, who raised all livestock and produce by hand, without assistance from the latest cultivation methods.

But after spending a day this past weekend at a country estate just outside of New York City, I have realized that organically farmed cuisine is swiftly losing its place as the food of fashion. Now, affluent gourmands are embracing the most primitive strategy of all for procuring their meals: foraging.

The rural charm of tractors and bucolic barnyard animals are no match for exploring open meadows and wooded glades for earth’s natural bounty. Admittedly, when I followed a group of friends out into the forest, I didn’t expect to find anything edible except for maybe a few scattered patches of mint along a streambed. But my pessimism was unfounded. On a brief hour-long walk, we managed to gather everything from wild onion to watercress. And I was told by one of my companions that, if we had kept at it for a short while longer, we could have added morels and freshwater shellfish to our haul.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess, not after being served foraged asparagus at a dinner party in Manhattan only a week before. It may take more than two incidents like these to officially establish the delicacy of foraged food as an enduring trend. But, there’s no doubt that the practice is out there securing a footing with a swelling number of influential tastemakers.

It’s hard to say what exactly has inspired such a sudden interest in foraging. Is it what’s being gathered that matters most, or the act of acquiring items in the most time-honored way? If it’s true that the recession is fostering elemental tendencies in people, perhaps this it just another example. Or maybe it’s as simple as this: the more we develop, the more we are drawn to what is natural in our world.